Well over 2 million Swiss people currently use the SBB Half-Fare travelcard, making it the most popular discount card in Switzerland. SBB now wants to offer its regular customers additional services to make the travelcard even more attractive. Following the 1, 2 and 3-year Half-Fare travelcards, a new Half-Fare travelcard with Visa card is now being launched: a free credit card and Half-Fare travelcard in one.
Double benefit visualized
As part of the mandate for SBB regular customer marketing, Euro RSCG Zurich was commissioned to develop the launch campaign for the Half-Fare travelcard with Visa card and to integrate the new offer into the ongoing regular customer processing process. With "Pay with your Half-Fare travelcard", a campaign was created that cleverly combines train travel with shopping and payment. The joint benefit was dramatized by combining the two worlds into one image. In this way, the train attendants also become service providers where you shop or pay: in a restaurant, a jewelry store, a convenience store or a modern shoe store.
The campaign will be on-air from October and will cover a wide range of communication media. In an initial phase, brochures will be used at the POS and at train stations, as well as integration into multi-stage direct mailings (offline and online). Posters and advertisements are also planned for a later date.
Andreas Panzeri

Ringier now controls 100 percent of its publishing and printing business in Serbia. The Zofingen-based company acquired the shares on October 7, 2008 from its minority partner VCP Media Partners B.V. VCP had held a 25.1 percent stake in Ringier.d.o.o and Blic Marketing d.o.o since Ringier entered the market. Ringier has been active in Serbia since November 2003 and publishes a total of three newspapers there, including the country's most widely read daily newspaper, Blic. Ringier also owns two magazines, three websites, the distribution and subscription company Transpress and the printing company APM Print in Belgrade. Ringier Serbia currently employs 477 people.

Monday morning 8:30 a.m. Next to the Werbewoche editorial office at Neugasse 10, the entrance to the neighboring house is blocked off. The entrance and parts of the house facade are smeared with red paint. Plainclothes policemen are taking pictures and securing traces. Arriving at the editorial office, I learn that the paint attack was directed at the film distribution company Pathé Film. Pathé distributes the film "The Baader Meinhof Complex".
Let's see what can already be found about it on the Internet. I first find what I'm looking for on 20minuten.ch. There is a longer article (about 2,000 characters) with a picture series of six pictures. There are links to an article about the Zurich premiere of the Baader-Meinhof film and to the corresponding trailer. Another link leads to an interview with the director of the film. An excellently done context box about the history of the RAF, with a timeline from 1967 to 1992, with corresponding articles from the press and a terrorist photo gallery completes the picture. An additional article was linked later in the day: an interview with a former police officer about the RAF shooting in Zurich's main train station in 1979.
Next stop: Tagesanzeiger.ch. Here, too, a rather detailed article with about 16'00 characters with one picture. There are links to an interview with Stefan Aust, the former Spiegel editor-in-chief, whose book provided the basis for the film, further to an article about a paint attack on Aust's residence two weeks ago and one such on the film review.
Continue to the Neue Zürcher Zeitung. On Nzz.ch you can find more or less the SDA report (540 characters). There are neither pictures nor links. A bit meager, but for a world paper Zurich does not seem to be first priority. The same picture also on Punkt.ch. Here, the SDA report was at least supplemented with two pictures. But further links are missing here, too.
One would think that such an attack would be a feast for the tabloid press. But far from it: Blick.ch only carries the SDA report. Without photos, without links.
This small snapshot of the websites of five daily newspapers is not representative, but it does show how professionally or rather amateurishly the individual online editorial teams deal with a hot topic. A topsy-turvy world opens up: Of all things, 20 Minuten, which was vilified for years for allegedly only passing on agency reports, is clearly ahead here. With a respectable performance of its own and an Internet-friendly presentation of the story. NZZ and Blick could still learn something here. The Tages-Anzeiger has already gone through this learning phase; it has learned from its brothers in the house.
Pierre C. Meier, Editor-in-Chief
[email protected]

Papyrus is one of Europe's leading paper wholesalers. Headquartered in Mölndal near Gothenburg, Sweden, the Group is currently harmonizing its international product range. As part of this realignment, Papyrus is focusing on a small number of strong brands. One of these is Plano. The Plano business paper range is intended for business customers and is already well established in some countries. Plano is new for other countries. However, this brand is considered to be the strongest within the Group. For this reason, other local subsidiaries are now concentrating all their efforts on Plano. This brand was previously available in Germany, Switzerland and some Eastern European countries and has a strong market position in each of these markets.
The Zurich agency Noise has realized its first work in the paper industry for the Swiss brand Sihl Eika. With the concentration in the European paper market, Noise was also "taken" across national borders to Germany with this job. This has now resulted in the mandate for Papyrus.
High affinity for sport
The communication builds on the existing brand heritage, which is entirely focused on sport. A different sport appears on each Plano pack and together they form a team. The reason for the continuation of this successful concept lies in the high level of acceptance in the existing Plano countries. Customers here often ordered the "Plano with the footballer". And not ordered according to the official name Plano Universal. "The fundamentally positive and cross-national approach to the topic of sport also spoke in favor of continuing the idea," explains concept developer Martin Rüegg at Noise.
Accordingly, Noise's brief was to update the Plano brand with a focus on the existing core theme of sport and the positioning "The business paper by team players for team players". This brand world had to be implemented in the advertising material for the relaunch in the existing countries. Acceptance for the new brand also had to be created in the new countries.
Noise "gladly accepted this assignment and gave Plano a new and internationally compatible face," explains project manager Christian Frey. Packaging was created that stands out from the competition with a modern visual style and clean graphics, without breaking with the past. In print, the key visuals show classic office scenes in which all the protagonists are played by one and the same sportsman. The performance is underlined by the claim "Plano - Made to perform". In the area of give-aways, high-quality football balls were produced to be handed out to potential customers during sales talks. A commercial was produced with director Siro Micheroli and Gregor Fitz from Noise.
Cloud images for high-end customers
Noise also realized a campaign for Papyrus for the Sky copying and printing paper. This is aimed at specialist retailers in 19 European countries. Papyrus has made the strategic decision to sell the high-quality Sky only through specialist retailers. This means that the paper shops are less affected by the aggressively priced wholesale trade. For Noise, the visual world was to strengthen the Sky brand and positioning and complete the presentation. The Zurich-based creative team found what they were looking for in the cloud images of American professor Richard E. Carlson. His passion is collecting cloud images that - perhaps only at second glance - take the form of real creatures or things.
Andreas Panzeri

There was no ADC back then. It was only founded in Switzerland in 1976. But even in the era of Art Nouveau, someone would certainly have become a member: Otto Baumberger (1889-1961) was one of the leading illustrators and is regarded as Switzerland's first commercial artist. In any case, he was one of the first Swiss to be given the professional title of "poster designer", according to the exhibition organizers at the Zurich Museum of Design. Since the beginning of October and until the end of January, the museum has been presenting an exhibition of Otto Baumberger's graphics and illustrations in the poster room. At the same time, Baumberger's book illustrations and works on paper can be seen in a retrospective in the treasury of the Central Library at Predigerplatz 33 in Zurich.
The physical distance makes sense. Baumberger's fate was that he never actually wanted to do advertising as a designer. His wish to be honored as an artist was only fulfilled today with this retrospective show.
However, he should still be a source of pride in the Museum für Gestaltung show today. Baumberger designed over 200 posters, with which he promoted the renewal of the still young medium. "Without defining an actual style, he searched for the most appropriate solution for conveying a message," says the text accompanying the exhibition. His original pictorial inventions led to a reduction that went as far as abstraction, whereby pictorial and written elements "entered into an increasingly concise synthesis". In this sense, the diversity of Baumberger's work is almost exemplary of Swiss poster history in the first half of the 20th century.
As a self-taught artist, Baumberger was ahead of his time in recognizing key aspects of consumer goods advertising. The exhibition shows how his work shaped the development from painterly artist posters to graphically influenced corporate design.
Otto Baumberger trained in Zurich and Munich. He was initially a designer and later artistic director of the Wolfensberger Lithographic Institute in Zurich. There he designed posters, logos and stamps. He was responsible for entire advertising campaigns for the companies Grieder and PKZ. He also worked as picture editor at Nebelspalter and was able to repair his somewhat "left-wing" reputation with a monumental patriotic mural for the 1939 national exhibition. After the war, Baumberger was appointed associate professor at the ETH architecture department for the new subject "Relationship of color to building and space".
The current exhibitions are partly based on the estate donated to the Zentralbibiliothek by his son Rudolf Baumberger.
Andreas Panzeri

Just in time for the fall vacations, when many Swiss people flee to the south, the advertising agency Publicis has launched a window campaign for the sun cream manufacturer Garnier Ambre Solaire in collaboration with the Zurich swimwear store Tabou: With red-colored "sunburnt" mannequins in bikinis, the agency draws attention to the health risks of sunbathing without sun protection. The motto: "Sun protection never goes out of fashion."
The prevention campaign was on show for two and a half weeks. It ended last Friday.
Responsible at Garnier: Raphael Thürig (Group Manager Garnier). Responsible at Publicis: Florian Beck (CD), Denis Schwarz (AD), Claude Catsky (text), Valentin Cheli (graphics), Mark Becher and Simone Keusch (consulting).

Some people have strange professions. For example, the American filmmaker Melvin van Peebles, now a proud 76 years old and as active as ever: first he was a military pilot, then a cable car driver in San Francisco, a self-proclaimed director, a clochard in Paris, a celebrated movie star and musician, a Wall Street broker and book author in between, and then a film hero and producer again. Others concentrate professionally on breaking records. Take Suresh Joachim, for example. The Canadian of Tamil descent holds 32 titles in the Guinness Book of Records. The 32nd title is still fresh in his mind: together with German film lover Claudia Wavra from Petersberg near Fulda, Joachim set a world record for continuous movie watching in New York on Tuesday. The two watched movies for 123 hours and 10 minutes without interruption.
They received moral support from Oscar winner Susan Sarandon for the final spurt of the cinema marathon. Joachim also holds titles in endurance dancing, endurance ironing and endurance karaoke singing (25 hours and 49 minutes). The SDA did not reveal whether he was ironing at the same time as his movie binge record.

On October 1st, Wemf AG für Werbemedienforschung published the annual circulation figures for Swiss press products. They apply to the period between July 1, 2007 and June 30, 2008 and are based on the principle of self-declaration.
20 minutes over and over again
The free titles are ahead and once again confirm the continuing upward trend in this segment. The big winner is the commuter paper 20 Minuten. The title increased its circulation by a further 90,891 copies from 435,460 to 526,351 copies. The French-speaking Swiss edition 20 minutes also increased its circulation from 210,108 to 221,560 copies. The neck-and-neck race in French-speaking Switzerland, however, was decided by Le Matin Bleu from Edipresse with an increase of 47,862 copies from 183,011 to 230,873. Blick am Abend reported a provisional 210,692 copies for the first time. No official Wemf figures are yet available for News and .ch.
Paid newspapers lose again
However, the positive trend in the free press continues at the expense of the paid daily newspapers. Only Südostschweiz saw a minimal increase from 126,613 to 127,428 copies, while the other daily newspapers lost ground. Blick in particular fell by 8,831 copies from 240,066 to 231,235 copies. The Tages-Anzeiger also lost 2673 copies despite its regional growth strategy, with a total of 213,738 copies. The Neue Zürcher Zeitung, the Berner Zeitung and the neue Luzerner Zeitung recorded small losses. The St. Galler Tagblatt fell below the 100,000 copy mark for the first time.
No bottlenecks on Sunday
The market for Sunday newspapers is showing conspicuous movements. Although more Sunday newspapers and Sunday editions of daily newspapers are entering the market, only SonntagsBlick has lost circulation among the existing Sunday papers. The market still seems to have further potential and fears that the new Sunday titles could put too much pressure on the existing ones have not materialized. The NZZ am Sonntag was able to increase its total paid circulation by a further 4,000 copies from 122,072 to 126,371 copies. The Sonntagszeitung remained stable with a circulation of 202,141 compared to 202,222 copies in the previous year. Sonntag, published by AZ-Medien, entered the market with a provisionally certified circulation of 190,107 copies.
SonntagsBlick again suffered a decline, with its circulation falling by 3,290 copies from 265,478 to 262,188 copies, less than a year ago. The loss at Le Matin Dimanche was greater. The French-speaking Swiss paper lost more than 8,000 copies and now has a circulation of 202,030. In French-speaking Switzerland, the free press is having a major impact on the title.
The trilingual publications of the two major distributors Coop and Migros lead the specialty press segment. As in the previous year, the Coop press increased its circulation by 26,000 copies, while the Migros magazine saw its circulation fall by 24,000. The circulation of the TCS newspaper Touring also fell by 17,000 copies.
In the consumer press segment, Schweizer Illustrierte and Tele were among the losers with a loss of around 16,000 copies each. Schweizer Familie was able to increase its circulation by around 3,000 copies. The circulation of Beobachter, Glückspost, Weltwoche and WoZ remained roughly the same.
The financial publications were all able to increase their circulation. The circulation of the Handelszeitung rose the most, from 30,861 to 45,190 copies. According to Wemf, however, the latest figure is provisional. The background to the increase in circulation was the discontinuation of the business newspaper Cash in mid-2007. Around 27,000 of the total of 43,000 Cash subscribers now subscribed to the Handelszeitung, around 5,000 opted for Bilanz and 2,000 for the investor magazine Stocks. (red/sda)

Serge Reymond will become the new Deputy CEO of the media house Edipresse Switzerland as of January 1, 2009. He will then take over from Théo Bouchat as CEO in the course of 2009. Reymond will also assume the position of Director Sales, which will also be created at the beginning of 2009. Théo Bouchat intends to gradually withdraw from operational business next summer, the company announced on Wednesday.
The 45-year-old Serge Reymond comes from Lausanne, is married and father of two children. He studied mathematics and economics. His career has always been at the intersection of corporate management and sales, the statement continues. Reymond subsequently worked for the medical distributor Galenica and for the Swatch Group. In 1997, he moved to Naville, which distributes press and trend products and is 35 percent owned by Edipresse. At Naville, Reymond was responsible for stores and kiosks, and in 2007 he was appointed chairman.

The art of ballet has always been visually appealing. It becomes the pinnacle of poster art when the prima ballerinas and star dancers are also presented in the right light by a star photographer. Together with Daniel Soldenhoff's Zurich agency Eyeworks, Alberto Venzago has designed an image campaign for the Zurich Ballet. The new image focuses on the essence of the art of dance and puts Heinz Spoerli's Zurich Ballet in the limelight. The internationally acclaimed choreographer has previously worked with Alberto Venzago for the opera house's ballet newspaper.
The current posters can be seen at selected APG locations in Zurich city center until October 12. If you missed the show, you can also find them in F4 format at the box office of the Opera House. The campaign was supported by UBS and the Friends of Zurich Ballet. In addition to the five poster subjects, the dancing figures can also be discovered as "Male" and "Female" on two Zurich Ballet vans.
More of Venzago can currently be seen at Casino Zug. After four years of touring the world, the show "Voodoo, Mounted by the Gods" is back there. Heinz Spoerli's next premiere at the opera house will be "La Sylphide" on October 18.
Andreas Panzeri